For anyone thinking this will end soon, remember these two key points.

1. The owners have already destroyed one season. They seem to be perfectly willing to do it again, especially with Jeremy Jacobs as the chair of the Board of Governors.2. The players union selected Donald (screw the World Series) Fehr as their Executive Director.

This incarnation of the NHL has already lost me. Nuke it from orbit, go back to the original 12 or so teams and try again. Deal with these issues up front and come up with some workarounds for when labor deals do expire. And for FSM's sake, don't hire anyone from the NBA for any management jobs

If the owners really wanted the whole league of 30 teams to thrive they would put in place a system where the gate receipts (minus the luxury boxes) is split 60/40 like in the NFL. NHL currently has gate receipts going to the home team 100% and of course some teams will make money while others will lose money if the cap is set based on the whole league HRR.

This is another example of greedy owners not being able to control themselves with the contracts that they offer and want the players to take another pay cut after the 2005 CBA which Bettman himself said that it was the deal needed to move NHL forward.

Fact of the matter is that the players' 3rd proposal of yesterday did have a 50/50 split of HRR starting this season as long as all existing contracts were to be paid in full. Owners don't want that after spending the past few offseasons offering 10+years deals worth close to or over 100 mil each.

Your Zionist Leader:This incarnation of the NHL has already lost me. Nuke it from orbit, go back to the original 12 or so teams and try again. Deal with these issues up front and come up with some workarounds for when labor deals do expire. And for FSM's sake, don't hire anyone from the NBA for any management jobs

So shut down Edmonton, bring back Oakland?

The NHL has no worries about the fans. How many fans who cheered Boston, Chicago or LA recently, had vowed they were done with the NHL in 04-05. Most came back. All that matters these days is how good the local team is.

ddam:If the owners really wanted the whole league of 30 teams to thrive they would put in place a system where the gate receipts (minus the luxury boxes) is split 60/40 like in the NFL. NHL currently has gate receipts going to the home team 100% and of course some teams will make money while others will lose money if the cap is set based on the whole league HRR.

This is another example of greedy owners not being able to control themselves with the contracts that they offer and want the players to take another pay cut after the 2005 CBA which Bettman himself said that it was the deal needed to move NHL forward.

Fact of the matter is that the players' 3rd proposal of yesterday did have a 50/50 split of HRR starting this season as long as all existing contracts were to be paid in full. Owners don't want that after spending the past few offseasons offering 10+years deals worth close to or over 100 mil each.

well you said it just as well as I would have. You also saved me some typing so...thanks.

Decillion:Your Zionist Leader: This incarnation of the NHL has already lost me. Nuke it from orbit, go back to the original 12 or so teams and try again. Deal with these issues up front and come up with some workarounds for when labor deals do expire. And for FSM's sake, don't hire anyone from the NBA for any management jobs

So shut down Edmonton, bring back Oakland?

The NHL has no worries about the fans. How many fans who cheered Boston, Chicago or LA recently, had vowed they were done with the NHL in 04-05. Most came back. All that matters these days is how good the local team is.

Within reason of course. And I don't know about it this time, a good number of casual fans are still gone from before and now they're chipping away at the die hards. Of course hockey in places like Detroit, Montreal, Boston, etc will carry on business as usual. The teams more on the fringe will be the ones hit, and in the end, in my opinion, they will have to deal with contraction over relocation because they've just done too much damage to the product.

What kills me is that Bettman and company spent about as long as it takes for me to put out a decent dump to reject 3 different offers from the NHLPA. Bettman and company must have some other-worldly speed reading skills.

KarlMaldensNose:What kills me is that Bettman and company spent about as long as it takes for me to put out a decent dump to reject 3 different offers from the NHLPA. Bettman and company must have some other-worldly speed reading skills.

NHL owners do not want to guarantee that 100% of contracts on the books will be paid. Any proposal that has that in it is automatically turned down.

I though the 3rd proposal from the NHLPA is the fairest to both sides. 50/50 split as of this season, cap set at 59 mil with adjustments that only 87% of existing contracts count towards cap while the team is responsible to pay the whole amount.

The players should just go play in Europe and forget the NHL. It has overexpanded, and will never make money in warm weather climates with no tradition of winter sports. Let it collapse, and be replaced by a new North American pro hockey league, or reformed into something that doesn't resemble the trainwreck it is now. Here is a piece I wrote during the last NHL lockout, if you are interested.http://www.uncoveror.com/nhl.htm

ddam:This is another example of greedy owners not being able to control themselves with the contracts that they offer and want the players to take another pay cut after the 2005 CBA which Bettman himself said that it was the deal needed to move NHL forward.

This.

There isn't going to be a season this year. I'm okay with that, even though my team, the Ottawa Senators, were looking like they were going to have a great year. Really I could give a fark about hockey these days.

ddam:KarlMaldensNose: What kills me is that Bettman and company spent about as long as it takes for me to put out a decent dump to reject 3 different offers from the NHLPA. Bettman and company must have some other-worldly speed reading skills.

NHL owners do not want to guarantee that 100% of contracts on the books will be paid. Any proposal that has that in it is automatically turned down.

I though the 3rd proposal from the NHLPA is the fairest to both sides. 50/50 split as of this season, cap set at 59 mil with adjustments that only 87% of existing contracts count towards cap while the team is responsible to pay the whole amount.

But you get nowhere near 50% with that even over the course of the whole deal. The number ended up being about the same as it is today for most of the length of it. Keep in mind you have guys with huge 10+ year contracts out there.

Is the owners deal perfect? of course not. But it is a pretty decent starting point. The players pretty much ignored that.

LineNoise:ddam: KarlMaldensNose: What kills me is that Bettman and company spent about as long as it takes for me to put out a decent dump to reject 3 different offers from the NHLPA. Bettman and company must have some other-worldly speed reading skills.

NHL owners do not want to guarantee that 100% of contracts on the books will be paid. Any proposal that has that in it is automatically turned down.

I though the 3rd proposal from the NHLPA is the fairest to both sides. 50/50 split as of this season, cap set at 59 mil with adjustments that only 87% of existing contracts count towards cap while the team is responsible to pay the whole amount.

But you get nowhere near 50% with that even over the course of the whole deal. The number ended up being about the same as it is today for most of the length of it. Keep in mind you have guys with huge 10+ year contracts out there.

Is the owners deal perfect? of course not. But it is a pretty decent starting point. The players pretty much ignored that.

You are at 50/50 from now on. Contracts on the books have to be paid because they have been signed already. The players are against any rollback on existing contracts and for good reason... they rolled back contracts 25% a few years ago.

The teams wanted those 10+year contracts because they wanted to circumvent the salary cap. The teams offered the contracts, not the players.

And until the league puts in sharing of the gates receipts I refuse to believe their rethoric that they care about all 30 teams.

The fact that Fehr is involved tells me all I need to know about the likelihood of this getting resolved. He doesn't care, the owners don't care, and in the end the fans and all the infrastructure employees will be the ones who suffer. And it's gonna take a helluva lot for me to not feel that way at this point.

LineNoise:ddam: KarlMaldensNose: What kills me is that Bettman and company spent about as long as it takes for me to put out a decent dump to reject 3 different offers from the NHLPA. Bettman and company must have some other-worldly speed reading skills.

NHL owners do not want to guarantee that 100% of contracts on the books will be paid. Any proposal that has that in it is automatically turned down.

I though the 3rd proposal from the NHLPA is the fairest to both sides. 50/50 split as of this season, cap set at 59 mil with adjustments that only 87% of existing contracts count towards cap while the team is responsible to pay the whole amount.

But you get nowhere near 50% with that even over the course of the whole deal. The number ended up being about the same as it is today for most of the length of it. Keep in mind you have guys with huge 10+ year contracts out there.

Is the owners deal perfect? of course not. But it is a pretty decent starting point. The players pretty much ignored that.

And who's fault are those 10 year plus contracts? The owners shouldn't get to sign these huge deals and then say "Um hey, you know all that money we promised you? Yeah, we're not gonna pay you that. Is that ok?" It is laughable to me that Craig Leopold, the guy in Minnesota who earlier in the off season paid 2 guys about 200 million dollars, was at this meeting saying "We can't do this anymore. Please save us from ourselves." The owners did this to themselves and once again want the players to bail them out.

wooden_badger:For anyone thinking this will end soon, remember these two key points.

1. The owners have already destroyed one season. They seem to be perfectly willing to do it again, especially with Jeremy Jacobs as the chair of the Board of Governors.2. The players union selected Donald (screw the World Series) Fehr as their Executive Director.

KarlMaldensNose:LineNoise: ddam: KarlMaldensNose: What kills me is that Bettman and company spent about as long as it takes for me to put out a decent dump to reject 3 different offers from the NHLPA. Bettman and company must have some other-worldly speed reading skills.

NHL owners do not want to guarantee that 100% of contracts on the books will be paid. Any proposal that has that in it is automatically turned down.

I though the 3rd proposal from the NHLPA is the fairest to both sides. 50/50 split as of this season, cap set at 59 mil with adjustments that only 87% of existing contracts count towards cap while the team is responsible to pay the whole amount.

But you get nowhere near 50% with that even over the course of the whole deal. The number ended up being about the same as it is today for most of the length of it. Keep in mind you have guys with huge 10+ year contracts out there.

Is the owners deal perfect? of course not. But it is a pretty decent starting point. The players pretty much ignored that.

And who's fault are those 10 year plus contracts? The owners shouldn't get to sign these huge deals and then say "Um hey, you know all that money we promised you? Yeah, we're not gonna pay you that. Is that ok?" It is laughable to me that Craig Leopold, the guy in Minnesota who earlier in the off season paid 2 guys about 200 million dollars, was at this meeting saying "We can't do this anymore. Please save us from ourselves." The owners did this to themselves and once again want the players to bail them out.

Sounds to me the answer is to let the owners reduce the current contracts by whatever percentage they want, but give any player who's contract is altered the ability to walk away as a UFA. IF the owners don't want to pay them, fine, but they should be allowed to quit and find work elsewhere instead of taking a pay cut with no recourse. I know damn well if my boss came to me and said "Abmoraz, you know you are a valued employee here, but we can't afford to keep paying you at the current rate. We need you to take a 25% pay cut" that I would be knocking on our competitor's door seeing if they were willing to pay a "valued employee" what he thought he was worth.

This is all posturing. Even some NHL execs are saying that privately to reporters. Clearly, they're not on the same page yet, the owners and the union. But they're not as far apart as it may seem. The 2 sides are in agreement on the split of money, for once! It's just how to get there that's the worry.

Yes, the players want to get paid in full. And they should want that. Who is on the negotiating team for the owners? The owner of the Minnesota Wild- who signed off on giving 2 players 13 year, $98 million deals just a few months ago. And now he wants to tell them "no, you can't have all that money." Give me a farking break!

If I'm the players, I go in and say "we'll take a 10% rollback on all contracts. BUT the 10% goes into a bank account and is still paid to each player within 5 years after the player's career ends." Because the owners shouldn't be bailed out on their own stupidity, but that would still meet the goals of lowering the cap and getting to a 50-50 split.

The last lockout around the power was nearly entirely in the NHLs hands.

however this time around I feel like the power isnt entirely the same anymore. The dynamic has shifted with a much larger opportunity for top flight players to take up roots in the KHL, Swiss/Fin/Swede/German leagues.

Especially with the money starting to catch up to the gap between euro hockey pay and NHL hockey pay, the top flight players while losing some, are not losing all of their opportunity. The time right now is RIPE for the players to tell the NHL to go fark themselves. Yeah it sort of leaves the bottom third of the NHL hanging in the wind but i think most of those guys know that even with a full time NHL going the situation for their careers is pretty much the same. On a game by game basis for the most part.

In the end. The relevance of Euro hockey is taking away some of the juice the NHL once had. If the players REALLY wanted to win this, they could all go to Europe and let the NHL big swinging dicks float in the wind. It wont be too long losing 2 billion a year before the owners ditch Buttman and beg the players to come back with a sweet deal.

The amazing thing is that the NHL owners appear to be willing to let Buttman play chicken with 2 billion in revenue for the sake of saving 2-3 franchises that are losing 20-40 million a year. in a worst case scenario thats 6% of revenue.

sedric:call me when its over.. I want my hockey same as everyone, but really both sides are being dicks, although i kind of find myself siding with the players, maybe cause i play the sport rather than own a team.

Soon enough the AHL games will be on the tube and although the talent is less its still pro hockey.

Question does gary Bettman ever get a photo taken where you do NOT want to punch his farkin teeth out??

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The day the Bettman steps down/is removed as commissioner will be a national holiday in Canada.

After the last lockout I stopped following hockey altogether until my ex started getting me to watch it again. Now that I'm married to a non-fan, there's no incentive for me to start watching greedy biatches play a game when I could be playing a game of my own. fark millionaires complaining that they aren't rich enough. I'm done.

Is the owners deal perfect? of course not. But it is a pretty decent starting point. The players pretty much ignored that.

Sure, if you consider the players agreeing to 50/50 then caving to everything else a decent starting point. Another Farker(raise your hand if you're here) made the same observation when the NHL released that number earlier this week but left out the rest. The owners want to cut the giant contracts they signed, limit contract terms(entry, arbitration and UFA), tinker with arbitration and raise the age of free agency. On top of that they still aren't talking about genuine revenue sharing. Again, this wasn't a starting point, it was a PR move.

Flappyhead:Sure, if you consider the players agreeing to 50/50 then caving to everything else a decent starting point. Another Farker(raise your hand if you're here) made the same observation when the NHL released that number earlier this week but left out the rest.

There are a few of us who pointed out immediately that the NHL's release of the "50-50" split without any other details was nothing more than a PR move. It seems to have had the desired impact on some fans who can't move past it.

Is the owners deal perfect? of course not. But it is a pretty decent starting point. The players pretty much ignored that.

Sure, if you consider the players agreeing to 50/50 then caving to everything else a decent starting point. Another Farker(raise your hand if you're here) made the same observation when the NHL released that number earlier this week but left out the rest. The owners want to cut the giant contracts they signed, limit contract terms(entry, arbitration and UFA), tinker with arbitration and raise the age of free agency. On top of that they still aren't talking about genuine revenue sharing. Again, this wasn't a starting point, it was a PR move.

That was me. The owners hired some high level political PR guy who's helping them spin this whole thing

Yanks_RSJ:Flappyhead: Sure, if you consider the players agreeing to 50/50 then caving to everything else a decent starting point. Another Farker(raise your hand if you're here) made the same observation when the NHL released that number earlier this week but left out the rest.

There are a few of us who pointed out immediately that the NHL's release of the "50-50" split without any other details was nothing more than a PR move. It seems to have had the desired impact on some fans who can't move past it.

ddam:You are at 50/50 from now on. Contracts on the books have to be paid because they have been signed already. The players are against any rollback on existing contracts and for good reason... they rolled back contracts 25% a few years ago.

The teams wanted those 10+year contracts because they wanted to circumvent the salary cap. The teams offered the contracts, not the players.

And until the league puts in sharing of the gates receipts I refuse to believe their rethoric that they care about all 30 teams.

This, almost exactly. The whole idea that the owners are trying to renege on deals that they made (as recently as three months ago!) is just ludicrous, to my mind. Especially since the owners got basically everything that they wanted in 2004-05. They got their salary cap. They got their current contract rollbacks. They got their definition of hockey-related revenues. They got the rule changes, the free agency changes, and the first-contract changes. Hell, last year, they got their TV contract, and they got record revenues league-wide.

To top that off, there's the absolutely ludicrous way the negotiations have been conducted. NHL makes an offer around July 13, NHLPA has to request more financial info from the league and then counter-offers August 13. NHL just sits their with their thumbs up their asses for the next month, before imposing an arbitrary negotiating deadline and, after a last few offers on September 13 (which nobody expected to be accepted) the league locks the players out September 15. Since then, have we seen anything? No, the NHL has just stonewalled, doing "market research" and other bullshiat, til this new offer and another arbitrary deadline for a full season. Players at least make the effort, coming back with a counterproposal that basically asks the owners to honor their damn contracts but agrees to the 50/50 revenue split, and the league turns them down flat. Now they're going to start cancelling regular season games and try to blame it on the players for being unreasonable, even though the players at least have made an effort to negotiate in good faith.